


you've been locked in here forever (just can't say goodbye)

by astrobi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But it's still canon compliant, Canon Compliant, Drinking, I'm pretending certain things in canon didn't happen, Kisses, M/M, Making Out, Making Up, Minor Character Death, Post Season 8, Post-Canon, Season 8 Spoilers, Weddings, bad metaphors, kind of, klance, our faves being emotionally constipated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 02:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17014131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrobi/pseuds/astrobi
Summary: “Can you just explain to me,” Lance starts, talking more to the pitch-blackness of Keith’s room than to Keith himself, “why you even let this happen?”Keith hums noncommittally, dragging his lips lazily down Lance’s neck. “This is me,” he says, pressing a thumb to the hollow of his throat and holding it there, waiting, “choosing you, dumbass. And I’d choose you again in a heartbeat. This is me telling you I’m always going to choose you.”or: when the war ends, Keith leaves and Lance is heartbroken. A year later, they meet at Lance's farm for Shiro's wedding.





	you've been locked in here forever (just can't say goodbye)

**Author's Note:**

> hi guys!  
> a few things:
> 
> 1\. this is set about a year after season 8, or when the epilogue takes place, although they're all around 24 years old
> 
> 2\. i selectively chose a few details from canon that i wanted to be Not The Same - the castle never got sacrificed, Allura dies in battle so they have a body, and i'm sorry guys but my boy Lance does NOT spend the rest of his life farming and being sad about Allura. that Does Not Happen.
> 
> 3\. title is from "Apocalypse" by Cigarettes After Sex, which i listened to on repeat while writing this because it's absolutely perfect. the entire album is great for this fic tbh
> 
> 4\. i did not like season 8, i'm going to be real with you all, but VLD still was a big part of my life, and the great thing about fanon is that it can be literally whatever you want it to be. so i'm making the best of it and giving my boys the love they deserve :')

Old wounds don’t close that easily.

 

If you asked Lance to tell you how many scars he has, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. There was a time when they criss-crossed his body so thoroughly that his legs and torso looked like a map for the London underground. Even now, the white marks are still there, in places, while others are marred with shiny pink. Innumerable times gone into the healing pods and out, countless accidents while training and fewer, serious ones during battle. Something in space must have been helping him out, because his small cuts healed within seconds. New wounds close fast. They heal as quickly as they form, another tally, another scrape, another bruise that heals so fast he might as well have been watching it form in reverse.

 

Old wounds don’t heal. Think raised pink scar tissue splayed in a cobweb across his back, from the bomb on that first night on Arus. Think a finger that never healed in the right position. Think nightmares: his friends screaming, his nephews screaming, a little girl crouched in the corner of an alien bazaar, screaming screaming screaming. Most of the screams that he hears are his own, probably.

 

Old wounds never go away. You readjust. You buy a memory foam mattress for the perpetual ache in your back, and a brace for the finger. You sweat your way through the nightmares and live to see morning. 

 

Life moves on.

 

/

 

When the phone rings, it’s three forty-two a.m.

 

Lance picks it up with one arm, not entirely sure if he’s awake yet. There’s silence when he puts it to his ear, but the heavy kind. He can hear someone breathing, soft and steady, on the other end. 

 

It’s fifteen long seconds before anyone says anything.

 

“Hello?” Lance whispers at last into the receiver. His eyes are still closed. “Is anyone there?”

 

There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other end. “ _ Lance? _ ” the voice asks, sounding surprised. “ _ Why are you here? _ ” The static makes it almost impossible to discern who the voice belongs to but Lance’s eyes snap open anyway.  _ No.  _

 

He sits up in bed. 

 

“Keith.” 

 

It’s not a question.

 

There’s a heavy pause. “ _ Yeah. It’s me. Why are you here?” _

 

Lance rubs at his eyes. His alarm reads  _ 3:44 _ in glowing red letters. It’s too early for this bullshit, Keith or no Keith. “What do you mean? You called my house.”

 

“ _ Your- _ ” Keith stops. “ _ Oh. I didn’t know you live here. _ ”

 

Lance feels a twinge of annoyance.  _ Some nerve Keith has, what the  _ fuck _ does he want- _ “Right. Why’d you call then?”

 

“ _ Hunk gave me this number. Said it was the florist.” _

 

Lance clears his throat and can’t help but smile, just the smallest amount. “Yeah. We live on the farm. My mom’s the florist for this weekend.”

 

There’s a polite  _ ah _ on the other end. “ _ So,”  _ comes the reply at last. “ _ Didn’t know you were hosting.” _

 

“I am,” Lance replies tersely. “You gonna show up?”

 

“ _ What?”  _ Keith sounds annoyed. “ _ Of course. Did you think I wouldn’t?” _

 

“I don’t know,” Lance says. It’s the truth, and the truth bites at him like the thorns on the rose bushes outside his window. “I just never know when to count on you to be here or not.”

 

There’s a pause.  _ “Lance _ ,” Keith starts, “ _ I’m sorry. Are you still-” _

 

“It’s ass-o’clock in the morning man. I gotta go.” Lance hangs up the phone, heart suddenly hammering in his chest. There’s a pressure behind his eyes and his palms are sweaty.  _ I’m not going to cry _ , he thinks.  _ That’s against the rules. _

 

“One year,” Lance mutters to himself as he turns over. The dark seems somehow thicker now, like the lack of light has congealed into a murky soup around him, wrapping him around and around like a blanket. “One entire fucking year. The  _ nerve _ -”

 

He cuts himself off. Thinking about it will only make him upset anyway.

 

/

_ three years and four months ago _

 

The muffled remnants of music can be heard through the floor, vibrations shaking the entire ship. There’s a sense of warmth in the air, something comfortable and familiar, making Lance feel like he should be glowing around the edges. Twenty one years old and five of those spent on an alien craft in space, huh.

 

The room he’s in is dark and lonely, a guest room down the hall from his own. The others are in the commons, having fun. Celebrating his birthday, without him. Not their fault though, he’s the one that left without telling anyone.

 

Lance takes a deep breath in. He hears footsteps outside in the hall, and before he can react, the door is sliding open and Keith is walking in.

 

“Happy twenty-first,” mumbles Keith somewhat gloomily. He steps out of the shadows from the corner of the room, holding two tall shot glasses in his hands. Lance sits on the floor, hardly looking up before he reaches a hand out to take one of the glasses. He sniffs the clear liquid once before recoiling in disgust.

 

“The  _ fuck _ is this Keith? Are you trying to poison me?” Lance exclaims, shooting a pointed glare sideways at where Keith is settling himself down next to him. Whatever’s in this glass smells like gasoline spilled on a dumpster. On fire.

 

“Nah,” says Keith with an easy smile. He leans his head back against the wall and wiggles his eyebrows at Lance. “I wouldn’t do that to you on your birthday.”

 

Lance frowns. “I don’t even know if it really  _ is _ my birthday,” he says, and it’s the truth. Time works differently in space. Every wormhole they pass through changes something - setting their clocks forward or back from anywhere between a few seconds and three days. “It might not be my twenty-first. I could be thirty by now.” He looks Keith in the eye. “I could be a thirty year old man by now, Keith.”

 

Keith raises an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. “You don’t look thirty. Maybe it’s the-”

 

“-skincare routine,” Lance finishes for him, cracking a smile. “I wasn’t kidding about the importance of exfoliation, you know.”

 

“Okay. I’ll humor you,” Keith begins. “But only because it’s your birthday today.”

 

“I told you, I don’t  _ know _ if-”

 

“Would you rather I make fun of you? Because I can do that too.”

 

“It’s just that- if I  _ am _ twenty one today, then I spent like five years out here with you guys,” Lance blurts out, suddenly. Keith blinks at him. “That’s a quarter of my life, Keith. One entire fourth.” He looks down at his lap. “I might be having a crisis.”

 

Keith hums softly. “Was it a fun quarter of your life?”

 

“What?”

 

“I said,” Keith says, moving closer to Lance and turning so that they’re face to face. The shot glass clinks against the metal floor when he sets it down. “Did you have fun?”

 

“I-” Lance doesn’t know how to answer that.  _ Was _ it fun? Was this whole thing something you could even call fun? “As much as I could, probably.”

 

Keith smiles at him like he got something right. “Then that’s as good as it’s going to get, I guess. Come on. Are you going to take this shot with me or not? If whatever this is kills me, I don’t want to die alone.”

 

Lance laughs. “Yeah, okay.”

 

Keith grabs his shot glass, looping his arm through Lance’s like they’re a pair of twelve year old girls. He grins at him. “On three,” he says. “One...two…”

 

“Three,” Lance finishes for him, squeezing his eyes shut and tossing the entire thing back before he can think twice. Immediately it hits him, burning a trail down his throat and leaving behind a feeling like he’s being gutted from the inside out. He’s been hit by a training bot and it’s hurt less than this. He’s been  _ shot _ and it’s hurt less than this. He opens his mouth in a gasp and hears Keith do the same thing across from him. “Oh-”

 

“ _ Shit, _ ” wheezes Keith. It really does burn, and for a second Lance wonders if Keith really  _ was  _ trying to poison him, giving him gasoline or rat poison or bleach, and he’s honestly considering reaching out to strangle the other when the sensation suddenly vanishes, leaving behind something that feels like the aftermath of five shots of tequila. He feels like he’s glowing. Lance opens his eyes and suddenly everything kind of looks like it  _ is _ glowing.

 

Keith’s expression is a mix of shocked and gleeful. “That was...something.”

 

Lance squints a little. Keith is backlit with the light from the hallway. One side of his collar is popped and the other is rumpled too flat. He’s glowing around the edges like he has a halo. “Hm,” he hums in agreement, voice coming out sounding like he’s underwater. “Strong. I thought I was going to die for a second.”

 

“Me too,” Keith says. He grins, standing up. He reaches out for Lance’s hand to pull him up to his feet and towards the door. “Let’s do it again.”

 

/

_ present day _

 

Imagine this: you’re twenty-one years old and you have more calluses on the palms of your hands than the number of hours you’ve slept this week. You’re a flesh-and-blood human in an infinite expanse of robot-people, creatures who might be a seamless combination of biology and something that isn’t quite real. You feel alone. You feel frightened. You feel like nothing at all.

 

Imagine this: you’re nineteen years old and you’ve stopped counting in Earth time. Your best friend says the word “month” and you’re too confused to admit that you forgot what the word means. You find the translator in the control room and look it up. When you remember, you stare blankly at the screen. You’re not sure if you’re really yourself anymore.

 

Imagine this: you’re seventeen years old. You’re not entirely sure how to hold a gun yet. You shoot down maybe three out of every seven training bots during practice. It’s okay; you’re not great, but it’s alright. You aren’t a soldier yet. You have time.

 

Imagine this: you’re twenty-four years old. When you step off the battlefield for the last time, it feels like a lie. Your family home is no longer a home to you, but a plethora of scents and photographs that have faded from your memory.You wake up with your hand curled around a pistol you don’t remember placing under your pillow. You are a soldier now. You feel it calling you back every day, a perpetual ache under your skin.

 

Lance doesn’t have to imagine anything. He’s lived these moments, one after another after another in a stuttering timeline of events that string together in the recesses of his memory. It’s like the last eight years of his life have been dissected, slowly, under a microscope and handed back to him in unrecognizable pieces. War is not something you can forget. It’s a wound that was preparing itself to form, so steadily that he didn’t even notice it until it was ripping him open, leaving him bleeding out on the floor.

 

War is an old wound. Lance cleaned out his weapon supply a year ago. He disassembled his guns and scrapped the old parts. He drove out into the middle of buttfuck nowhere and buried every last blade he had, deep under blistering desert soil so that the metal would rust over and the blood on his hands could maybe somehow be forgotten. He gave his Swiss Army knife to his older brother and his pocket knife to his mother. War is an old wound, but it’s starting to close.

 

Keith, however. Keith is a new wound.

 

What are you supposed to say when you haven’t spoken to someone in a year and they call you,  _ by accident _ , in the middle of the night? What are you supposed to say to someone who stood at your back and saved your life, who kept you from dying a thousand light years away from your home? What are you supposed to say to someone who was almost the most important thing in your life - until they ran away?

 

Lance, is, understandably, fuming.

 

“I don’t understand,” he says to Hunk as the two of them haul boxes from the giant delivery trucks in the driveway. The sun shines steadily down on them, leaving a sheen of sweat across their skin and their shirts clinging uncomfortably to their skin. Hunk is bearing with it better than Lance; for all of his talk of the beach and the sticky tropical heat that he so missed when they were in space, Lance doesn’t know how to deal with the dry desert sun in southwestern America. “He said  _ you _ gave him the number. Why wouldn’t you tell him it was me?”

 

Hunk pauses on his way to the door. “What do you mean?” There’s something in his tone that tells Lance that he knows  _ exactly _ what he means.

 

“Don’t fuck around with me,” Lance snarls, pushing past Hunk to nudge the door open with his shoulder. “I’m...I’m  _ so _ not in the mood for this Hunk.” There are stacks of tablecloths set out on the table and the floor is covered with columns of boxes containing everything from place cards to string lights. Everything you’d need for an outdoor wedding.

 

Lance glares at Hunk and crosses his arms. Hunk’s expression softens. There are dark circles under his eyes that Lance isn’t used to seeing. The two of them used to have skincare nights that first year in space, when things were overwhelming and dark and somehow the expanse of nothingness outside their windows made them feel claustrophobic. They’d rub lavender scented night cream under their eyes and joke about being the sexiest space superheroes the universe had ever seen.

 

Of course, they had both matured somewhat by now. Hunk’s face is etched with unfamiliar lines and the shadow of rugged facial hair along his jaw. They live too far apart to see each other more than once or twice a year, and Lance finally understands why his grandmother fussed over how much he grew every time they met. 

 

Finally, Hunk caves. He sighs. “It wasn’t the most sensitive choice, for you, I know, and I’m sorry Lance. I would never want to make you feel hurt and it…” he pauses, trying to find the right word. “It wasn’t okay to force you into confronting something like this before you were ready.”

 

“How would you know when I was ready anyway, huh?” Lance shoots back. “I don’t talk about this. I don’t talk about Keith and I probably never will.”

 

Hunk points at him almost accusingly. “That’s my exact  _ point _ , dumbass. You’re going to have to be ready soon because he’s going to  _ be here _ . Four more days and you’re going to have to see him. And talk to him. And do the whole ‘friendly banter’ thing because it’s his best friend’s  _ wedding _ and I’m not going to let either of you ruin this for each other.”

 

Ah. It starts to sink in then. Lance wouldn’t say it hits him like a ton of bricks, but it’s this creeping realization that he’s been shrugging off for months, like he’s been in denial ever since Shiro called him up that one night and told him the good news. He’s known this was going to happen, but he didn’t  _ know _ .

 

“Shit,” Lance mutters, and drags a hand over his face. His voice comes out a little shaky at the real thought of it and he sits down in one of the folding chairs next to the kitchen. He laughs, shaking his head. “Shit,” he repeats. “It’s really happening isn’t it?”

 

He looks up at Hunk, who’s watching him with a mixture of what feels almost like pride and pity. “It is.”

 

/

 

When Lance was younger, he had a recurring dream that a mysterious stranger came to his house to take him on an adventure. He had probably read  _ The Golden Compass _ too many times before bed, or something, because a tall woman with a long cloak and the kindest smile would float down from the sky and hold a hand out to him, like Glinda the Good Witch or something. “Come on, Lance”, she’d whisper into his ear, “do you want to go somewhere wonderful?”

 

And at eleven, that was exactly what he wanted - to grow out from under the shadow of his older siblings, to become someone who wasn’t just a sum of the most mediocre parts of his family. So he’d nod an enthusiastic yes and the two of them would set off down the street in the middle of the night, his hand clutched tightly in hers, as they headed off to find something great. There was always something waiting there for him: a dragon that needed to be slayed, a village that needed to be rescued. Here, Lance made his own adventures, and he was always the hero of his own story.

 

When he’s eighteen, his dream changes. The mysterious lady grows shorter, meaner, with the longest goddamn mullet the universe has ever seen, running ahead of him down a corridor while gunshots spark against unfamiliar metal walls.Suddenly it’s Keith, holding out a hand to pull him out of the airlock just in time. It’s him, and he’s everywhere, extending a hand to him to help haul Shiro onto the back of a hoverbike, pulling him up from the floor after thoroughly beating his ass during practice, clutching his hand on Arus and looking into his eyes…

 

Sometimes the memories are not memories, and Lance can’t tell which part is real and what isn’t.

 

But Keith is there, always, with that same smirk on his face and the same lock of hair falling in his eyes. Always,  _ always _ holding out that hand for him, saying

 

“Come on, Lance,”

 

“Do you want to go on an adventure?”

 

“There’s something really great waiting for us out there,”

 

“Come on, come on, comeoncomeon…”

 

They’re the kind of dreams that leave a bittersweet feeling in your gut when you wake up, when you know you were dreaming about something that could never happen but you miss it already. There’s something comforting about them; Lance wants to go back to sleep, to wrap himself up in the honey-golden glow and let it wash over him like a warm bath. But instead, he will groan and drag himself out of bed, dreading breakfast when Keith sits next to him at the table, resolving to never bring it up.

 

He never has to try. By the time he’s sitting down, the dream, laughing mockingly as it backs away, already faded from his memory.

 

/

 

_ two years and seven months ago _

 

“You know,” says Keith thoughtfully, “all this time we spent in space and we haven’t even seen a black hole yet.”

 

Of course that’s what he’s thinking about; of course that’s what he wants to see. This boy has stood his ground against entire alien armies, and he wants to fly right up against a black hole like an American family at a popular tourist attraction. Lance raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you serious?”

 

Keith hums something low in his throat and Lance feels it against his side, in his ribs. The two of them are sprawled heavily over each other on the couch in the break room, awkward and tangled, like they’re both teenagers trying to grow into their limbs. They collapsed immediately after walking out of the hangar, too tired to even drag themselves to the shower, or to their room. It’s innocent, it’s kind of gross anyway because they’re both so sweaty but still-

 

Lance’s heart is still hammering away.

 

“Yeah,” Keith continues, not lifting his head up from where it rests in the middle of Lance’s stomach. His armor is stiff against his skin and he can’t move his body. “I’ve been wondering how close we’d be able to get to it, you know? How much the lions could take, or the castle, before gravity started to rip us apart.”

 

“I’d place a bet but I don’t want to encourage you,” Lance replies, grinning.

 

“No, no,” Keith says, sounding interested. He turns his head to the other side, a gleam in his eye. “Indulge me, just this once.”

 

Lance laughs for real this time. “I think you’re forgetting the one time we actually traveled  _ inside _ a rip in the fabric of time and we were fine.”

 

Keith seems to consider this for a moment. “Maybe regular black holes are different,” he suggests.

 

“I doubt it,” Lance says. “I bet we could still get all the way to the singularity. Wouldn’t even turn into Lance spaghetti or anything.”

 

“Yes,  _ but _ ,” counters Keith, “that rip in the fabric of time had only a mild gravitational force. We’re talking about an object that formed from the largest stars in the entire universe here. I don’t think we’d be able to make it past the horizon.”

 

“Okay, I see how it is,” Lance says, sitting up. Keith shifts down his body for a second before he also sits up, a knowing look in his eye and a smirk on his face. This is something they know, something familiar to them. Lance versus Keith, it seems, has just been the way of the world for as long as he can remember. 

 

“I, uh, don’t have any money though,” Keith says quickly, face falling. “And bets aren’t any fun if you aren’t, well, betting anything.”

 

Lance grins. He knows exactly what he wants. “If I’m right, you’re buying me garlic knots at my favorite pizza shack back home.”

 

Keith lets out a sound of agreement. There’s something written between those lines:  _ given that we make it back alive and in one piece _ , but neither of them mention it. “Yeah, alright.”

 

“What about you?” asks Lance.

 

“I, uh. I don’t know,” replies Keith, brows furrowing.

 

Lance claps him on the shoulder and stands up, stretching with a groan. His bones feel like they’re popping, one by one. “Sleep on it, why don’t you, huh Mullet? Let me know when you’ve decided.” He winks at Keith, who’s looking at him, unimpressed, from the couch. “Don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to call you that, anyway.”

 

/

 

_ present day _

 

There’s a moment, around six o’clock on the Friday before the wedding, when Lance walks outside and realizes that he’s this close to completely losing it.

 

Look, he’s not much of a party planner, okay? And the only reason he agreed to help was because Shiro’s wedding was being held at his house. The backyard is big, faces west, and has a beautiful view of the mountains. Perfect for Shiro, who’s always wanted an outdoor wedding at sunset. And Lance spent most of this time fretting, because Shiro couldn’t even fly in until Saturday morning, just barely twelve hours before the ceremony, and he didn’t want anything to be wrong.

 

But it’s not. It’s perfect, really. The altar is set up and there’s a delicate string of flowers draped around it. Lights strung up around the building and above the tables, bathing everything in a warm, golden glow. It’s simple but poised. Perfect.

 

God, Lance is getting choked up. Did they really come this far? Did they really make it to see Shiro married? He isn’t going to lie, there were so many times when he thought they were going to die, alone and forgotten in the expanse of space, but this,  _ this _ is proof that that isn’t true.

 

He hears a laugh behind him and turns around to see Hunk, looking up at the lights with hands in his pockets. “Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it?”

 

Lance nods. “Shiro. Who would have thought?”

 

“Tomorrow,” Hunk sighs, “is going to be one hell of a night.”

 

That’s an understatement, Lance thinks.

 

/

 

_ two years, six months, and twenty-six days ago _

 

When Lance wakes up, it’s still dark in his room. The automatic lights haven’t turned on yet, which means it’s the middle of the night. He’s also groggy, but he doesn’t remember having a nightmare that roused him. He blinks, confused, and is about to roll over and go back to sleep when he hears a knock on his door.

 

_ Knock knock. _

 

Lance groans aloud. “What the fuck,” he says to whoever that is, voice hoarse with sleep, “do you want.”

 

“It’s Keith,” says the voice.  _ What? _ “Did I wake you up?

 

Lance drags himself to the door. “No,” he grumbles sarcastically. I was just lying on my bed. Awake. At four in the morning.”

 

The door slides open to reveal Keith in the hallway, clad in a black t-shirt and sweatpants with an apologetic look on his face. “Sorry,” he says, and he sounds like he means it. “We can talk in the morning if you want.”

 

Lance gives a dismissive wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about it,” he whispers, eyes still not entirely open. “You’re already here, aren’t you? What’s up?”

 

To his surprise, Keith shifts uneasily back and forth on his feet. “I, uh. Decided what I wanted to put down as my end of our bet from the other day.”

 

_ Oh? _ Lance is interested. “Do tell,” he says, more awake now than he was twenty seconds ago. He rubs his eyes and leans against the doorframe.

 

“If I’m right and you  _ do _ get spaghettified,” Keith says, pausing like he’s unsure of what to say next and taking a deep breath, “then you have to kiss me.”

 

Oh.  _ Oh _ . Lance opens his mouth to agree, to say that such an ask would really be benefitting both parties, and that  _ maybe _ he could be swayed with some light persuasion to kiss Keith anyway, but instead what comes out of his mouth is: “how am I supposed to kiss you if I’ve been stretched into a giant noodle and sucked into a black hole?”

 

Keith, for some reason, looks absolutely mortified. “Fuck,” he says. “I, uh- just. Just forget I said anything. I’m going to um. Go back to bed.”

 

He turns around to leave, and Lance finds himself reaching out and grabbing Keith’s wrist. “Hey,” he says teasingly. “I was just messing with you. It’s uh. It’s a deal.”

 

Keith’s neck looks red, but it’s hard to tell in the dark. “Right,” he says, eyes darting over Lance’s face like he can’t tell whether he’s lying or not. “It’s a deal.”

 

/

 

Darwin’s Theory of Gradualism considers change to be constant, minimal, and incremental over time. Like a gradient, a wash from one color to another, you wouldn’t even notice the change until it has already occured. All gradients have a root somewhere; all stories have a first page. Everything has a beginning, but only some things have an end.

 

When Lance is sixteen, it begins. He won’t truly know what  _ it _ is until almost six years later, or that anything has changed until the change hits him so hard that it knocks the breath out of his lungs, sending him reeling in his room with his head between his knees, gasping for air.

 

But this isn't a genesis. It’s an escalation.

 

/

 

_ present day _

 

The ceremony is beautiful. Lance cried more than he’d like to admit, but there’s no point in denying it because everyone cried with him. Pidge is here, and Hunk and Coran. It hurts a little, knowing that Allura won’t show up, but Lance has already harbored that pain in his chest for so long that it doesn’t ache like it used to. It’s like a small pinprick, over his heart, a reminder. 

 

They do the kissing thing. Then the cake thing. And then there’s some slow music with a steady bass playing in the background as everyone walks around the garden, lounges at their tables, laughter floating through the air and the lights casting a glow over everything, blanketing the party in light like a protective sphere - warm and safe and, for once, completely happy. 

 

As soon as everyone starts talking, Pidge runs over and nearly tackles him in a hug. “You absolute  _ asshole _ , Lance,” she shrieks. “What the  _ fuck.  _ You haven’t called in like a month. Or written? Or texted? Or done  _ anything _ ? I thought you  _ died _ .” She adjusts her glasses and looks up at him, frowning. She doesn’t have to look as far as she used to. She’s grown, Lance notices fondly, at least another five inches. Her hair isn’t as curly and it’s grown out into a bob down to her chin. She looks the part of a true scientist, a real space nerd.

 

“Sorry, Pidge,” he chuckled apologetically, reaching down to ruffle her hair out of habit. She pushes his hand away with a glare, but it softens once he pulls her into another hug, a real one. “I did miss you, though.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” she concedes. “I’ll forgive you if you get me some champagne.” She shoots him a smile.

 

Lance sighs. “You’re like, twelve,” he says. And then, “kidding, kidding!” when she hits him in the arm. Damn, old habits sure do die hard, huh?

 

“Anyway,” Pidge begins, and she has that  _ look _ on her face that tells Lance exactly what she’s going to say next. “Have you uh. Seen Keith yet?”

 

Lance frowns at her. “No.”

 

She waits. “And?”

 

“And nothing. What the fuck am I supposed to expect from him? What the fuck is  _ Shiro _ supposed to expect from him? I didn’t even see him during the ceremony. He promised he’d show up and-”

 

“Wait,” says Pidge, holding up a hand as a server hands her a champagne flute and a slice of cake. “You  _ spoke _ to him?”

 

Ah, yeah. Lance rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, uh, Hunk gave him our number and just said it was the florist. Tried to force us into a mini confrontation before tonight. He called at like three a.m., promised he was coming, started trying to apologize or something and then I uh. Might’ve hung up on him?”

 

He didn’t think it was possible for Pidge to look any more exasperated than she normally did at him, but he’s proven wrong. “Jesus  _ Christ _ , Lance. The first time you speak to him in a year and that’s what you say?”

 

Lance throws his hands up in defeat. “He took me by surprise okay? A heads up would have been nice, that’s all I’m saying. I just. I just want some answers. I just need to talk to him.”

 

Pidge looks at a spot somewhere over his shoulder, and her face breaks into a small smile. 

 

“Well,” she says, gesturing for Lance to turn around. When he does, he feels his heart literally stop in his chest. A figure he knows all too well, standing there in a black suit and red dress shirt, hands slipped casually into his pockets, looking like he wants to shrink back into the crowd. “There’s your chance.”

 

/

_ one year and six weeks ago _

 

“Lance!” Keith’s voice comes in over the comm, distorted with static and growing increasingly worried. “Are you - ah  _ shit _ \- sure you want to do this?”

 

Lance glances out the window of the red lion. Allura told them they would be passing a black hole a while ago, and Lance and Keith had exchanged glances - at first Lance wasn’t even sure if Keith remembered that bet they had made; it seemed so long ago. But he had the same expression on his face that Lance had grown to expect - even hope for - on his face: excitement, enthusiasm. This was the Keith that Lance needed, the one that never turned down a challenge.

 

Outside the lion, everything is distorting itself. Stars look like streaks, the lines of light bending and weaving around his lion as light gets pulled into the vortex. They’re approaching the horizon now, and Keith didn’t think they’d be able to make it past this. Does he remember what he said that night?  _ You have to kiss me _ , he’d whispered. Part of Lance wants to stop here, to pull back, to insist that his lion told him to stop out of danger. He wonders if this part of their challenge is worth it, if a kiss would be worth losing. That part of Lance is a dangerous part of Lance; it’s the part of Lance that wants to do things like brush Keith’s hair out of his face and tuck his face into the crook of his neck and breathe in…

 

Lance decides immediately that that part of his brain must be silenced at all costs - and pushes forward. “I’m doing great, babe!” he yells back into his helmet with a wide grin. “How about you?”

 

He can hear Keith grunting over the comm, and there, for a split second, wonders if they really  _ can _ do this - Keith isn’t going to drop out even if it meant killing himself, of this Lance is sure. But he hears him say “better than you will be, dumbass,” and figures everything is going to be alright anyway.

 

There’s something exhilarating in this, a kind of energy humming beneath his fingertips and through his body; he can almost feel his eyes vibrating in their sockets. He wants to scream with adrenaline, and he kind of wants to claw his skin off at the same time.  _ Christ _ . He hasn’t flown like this, wild and uninhibited and free, not to fight or defend or survive, but to  _ fly _ , in so long.

 

In the end, neither of them win. They make it past the horizon but Red balks at the ergosphere and Black refuses to go any further than that either. They fly back in silence, something unspoken hanging in the air between them, the question that neither of them want to ask:  _ so what now? _

 

Lance can’t help but feel a little disappointed, but then feels annoyed at himself for feeling like that.  _ So what _ , he thinks.  _ Just kiss him anyway _ .

 

_ But then, _ says the little voice in his head,  _ Keith wins. _

 

When they land back in the hangar and climb out of their lions, there’s a moment where neither of them speak, or make eye contact. 

 

“So,” says Keith at last.

 

“So,” echoes Lance. “What now?”

 

Keith cocks his head at him curiously. There’s a hint of a smile gracing his lips and Lance finds himself following the line of them before realizing it- “Depends,” says Keith, eyes glinting like he knows what Lance is thinking. 

 

Lance swallows. “On what?”

 

Keith tucks his helmet under his arm and makes to walk out of the room. As he passes Lance, he whispers with a smirk, “whether you want to stop by my room tonight.”

  
  


_ one year, five weeks, and six days ago _

 

When Lance is twenty-three, it looks, for the first time, like it’s going to end here. Here, with Keith pressed up against his front in a smooth line, hands entangled in Lance’s hair and exhaling softly, open-mouthed, against his lips. Here, with Keith solid and tangible in his hands, the smell of him filling the air and leaving him giddy with it, like cinnamon and clean air. Here, with Lance’s fingers skirting his pulse line and his back pressed up against the wall; it seems that here is where the  _ before _ finally ends and the  _ after _ begins.

 

The reality of it is underwhelming because it’s so  _ ordinary _ . Lance feels like they’ve been doing this forever, feels like it’s something ingrained into the motions of his hands, feels like he’s learned to slot their bodies together  _ ages _ ago, because really, this feels so right, so safe, that it doesn’t feel like their first kiss at all. “Lance,” Keith gasps, moving down to his neck, fingers tightening in his hair. Lance wants to back them into a cryopod like this, would be content to feel Keith against his pulse and his knee between his legs like this forever, wants it so bad that it aches in him. He wants to hurt with it.

 

“Why didn’t we,” breathes Lance over the skin stretched tight over Keith’s jaw, “do this,” he presses his lips there, bites down hard enough to leave a mark, relishing in the shudder that runs through Keith’s body and the moan that slips out through his lips, “before?”

 

“You were too busy being a hardass,” Keith mutters, trailing his hands down and around Lance’s waist, under his shirt, up his back and pulling the two of them even closer. Where Keith’s fingers touch he can feel a thousand pulses, beating beneath his skin, for him. “But this is a better look on you.”

 

Lance laughs and tugs at Keith’s hair, tilting his head back, mouthing over his clavicle. “Shut  _ up, _ ” he says with absolutely no bite.  _ Well, a little bite _ , he thinks smugly, watching the skin under his lips blossom pink and purple with a strange sense of satisfaction. Keith squirms. “And you’re still an absolute dick,” he whispers, “but that’s not stopping me.”

 

Keith’s eyes flash. “Less talking,” he mumbles into Lance’s lips, grabbing Lance’s hips and grinds upwards, laughing at the moan he lets out. 

 

It’s their first kiss in the red lion.

 

It’s also their last.

 

/

 

_ present day _

 

“So,” mumbles Pidge softly behind him. Keith hasn’t seen him yet, but he will soon, soon- “I’ll leave you guys to it,” she says, sounding sympathetic. “You can do this, Lance. I love you dumbass.”

 

He hears her walking away, and turns to wave goodbye, even though she can’t see him anymore. He grabs another flute of champagne and downs half of it in one go.  _ God, fuck _ .

 

When he turns back, Keith is looking at him, eyes wide and mouth open just the slightest amount.

 

_ Jesus, _ Lance hasn’t seen him in so long. He feels like the breath has been knocked out of him, and he can almost feel the stitch in his side burning as he gasps for air - suddenly, he’s in the middle of an unknown corridor, on a ship somewhere, he’s in the training room as the bot hits him in the ribs with a staff, he’s holding a hand over a knife wound in his eyes - 

 

He blinks. No, he’s not. He’s home. And Keith is walking towards him.

 

Something in him wants to curl up into a little ball and sink into the floor. Something in him wants to gouge Keith’s eyes out. Something in him feels every scar on his body opening up again, running red blood slick down his arms and legs and suffocating him in the sticky warmth. Keith is a new wound and an old wound, reopening over and over again and  _ refusing _ to heal at all.

 

“Lance,” says Keith, in front of him. His face looks almost the same, but his jaw has filled out the slightest bit, the scar on his cheek faded to almost a white-pink color. His eyes are still purple. His lips the same shape as before.

 

Lance looks away. “Yeah,” he says, a little bitter. “That’s my name.”

 

“You look good,” blurts Keith, surprising him. Lance looks back, and there’s a slight pink flush working its way up his nose and across his neck, like it did whenever he was flustered. “I mean, uh. It’s good to see you.”

 

Something in him hardens at that. He feels like his heart is folding in on itself, in half and fourths and eighths, until it’s so small that it might just be gone altogether. “You could’ve seen me earlier,” he says, still not looking Keith in the eye. “You know, if you didn’t run away. If you didn’t run away from  _ me. _ If you maybe bothered to show up to Allura’s funeral at all. If you picked up the phone when I needed you. Fuck, Keith,” Lance says, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying not to cry, “if you’d just  _ told  _ me  _ anything _ . I would’ve- that would’ve been something. It would’ve been enough for me.”

 

Keith is silent. And then he’s reaching a hand out towards Lance’s face, gently turning it towards him. Keith’s eyes are glittering in the light; Lance can see the reflections of the little globe lights above them. Behind Keith’s shoulder, he sees Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro all watching them carefully, whispering something to each other. “Please,” whispers Keith, voice cracking softly, along with Lance’s heart, “I’m sorry, Lance. I didn’t want to hurt you. I would never hurt you. You know that.”

 

And he does. There’s Keith, pushing him out of the way of fire and getting hit in the shoulder. He’s there, sparring with Lance and eyes going wide as his sword swings a little too fast, switching it back into bayard form and watching it land harmlessly against his feet. He’s there, over and over again: Keith, holding his hand and bandaging a cut on his knee; Keith, pressing a soft kiss to the scar above his eyebrow; Keith, who insists that his hands are built for battle and destruction but holding Lance’s so tenderly in his own - no one who touched him like that could ever want to hurt him.

 

“I do,” says Lance, feeling drained, and he means it. “Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt though.”

 

“I just,” Keith tries again. “You have to understand-”

 

“I don’t though,” admits Lance, feeling a little giddy. “Please, Keith, explain it to me because I don’t know what the  _ fuck _ I did wrong, and you’re just  _ here  _ after a  _ year _ of not talking to me and I-”

 

“You didn’t need me, then,” says Keith, softly, and the honesty of it shocks Lance into silence. “With Allura, and your family, and winning the war, and everything. You had a life to go back to, Lance. You could have clicked  _ play _ on where you left off and you could have had everything you were talking about in space. You could’ve had your white picket fence life, your cats. A family of your own. I wasn’t part of the game plan, for you,” he finishes still holding Lance’s face in his hand, “and I just had to accept that-”

 

“You,” Lance interrupts, a sob breaking loose from his throat, “had  _ no  _ right to make that choice for me, Keith.” He reaches up to touch Keith’s wrist. “And you don’t even know how  _ wrong _ you are. Almost seven years up there with you and you thought I didn’t want to be with you when we got back? Somehow  _ I’m _ the dumbass,” he says with a dry laugh. “Just. Just shut up, Mullet. Come here.”

 

And then they’re hugging, somehow. It’s so familiar that it aches, like a numbing warmth spreading through Lance’s body as Keith grips him and whispers  _ I missed you _ over and over again. It’s like something’s right. He came back to Earth a year ago, but now it’s like it’s the first time he’s coming  _ home _ .

 

/

 

“God,” Shiro says, straightening the lapel of his suit and dabbing at his eyes one last time before tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket. “I know it’s my wedding and all but I think I cried the most while watching them hug it out.”

 

Hunk nods and hands another glass of champagne to him and Pidge. “To married life, and Shiro” he sighs. “And to those two idiots.”

 

“Cheers,” says Pidge gloomily as they all take a drink.

 

/

 

Stories can have multiple beginnings. Like this: the story began seven years ago when three acquaintances, a military-grade dropout, and a victim of alien abduction come across a giant, lion-shaped warship in the middle of the desert. 

 

The story began when Keith showed up at Lance’s door in the middle of the night.

 

The story began the first time they flew together. No, when they sparred, and Keith held a sword to his throat before laughing and letting him up. No, when Keith almost flew into a force field, no, when Lance died and came back, no, no nono-

 

The story begins the first time, when Lance kissed Keith first.

 

The story begins, now, when Keith kisses him first.

 

/

 

_ one year, five weeks, and six days ago; pt. 2 _

 

“Can you just explain to me,” Lance starts, talking more to the pitch-blackness of Keith’s room than to Keith himself, “why you even let this happen?”

 

Keith hums noncommittally, dragging his lips lazily down Lance’s neck. “This is me,” he says, pressing a thumb to the hollow of his throat and holding it there, waiting, “choosing you, dumbass. And I’d choose you again in a heartbeat. This is me telling you I’m  _ always _ going to choose you.”

 

Lance weaves his fingers through long strands of hair, lazily stroking through them. “God,” he says dumbly, shivering at the calculated touches on his skin, tilting his head to the side. “Am I ever going to fucking be good enough for you?”

 

Keith kisses him dizzy, ugly, with teeth pressing against his lips and something that rips a groan out of Keith’s throat, hands at Lance’s jaws and the sheer force of the kiss arching him off the bed-

 

“Fuck you, Lance,” gasps Keith against his lips. “Even your ugliest parts are too good for me.”

 

Lance wants to protest, but there’s warmth and  _ Keith _ , here, so he simply lets himself melt, instead.

 

/

 

_ present day/the next morning _

 

When Lance dreamt, there was Keith, running in front of him like always, hand outstretched behind him and urging him to run faster.

 

But this time, Keith looks back at him. But this time, they’re on a beach at dawn, before the fog has cleared from the air and salt air settling on them in a tangible layer. But this time, Lance is done with adventures. He takes Keith’s hand, and they sit down on the sand, legs intertwined as they watch the sun rise.

 

When Lance wakes up, there’s Keith, mouth slack with sleep and starfished across the bed. But he’s there, and he’s real.

 

That’s all he really needs, anyway.

 

_ fin _ .

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> also!! please leave a kudos or comment if you liked it because they give me sustenance and keep me going. this fandom was shitty but to all y'all fic writers and content creators out there - you're doing god's work and i love and appreciate every single one of you  
> muah <3


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